their taxes will be raised the year following. The annual income of the
estates of a great many commoners in England amounts to two hundred
thousand livres, and yet these do not think it beneath them to plough the
lands which enrich them, and on which they enjoy their liberty.



LETTER X.--ON TRADE


As trade enriched the citizens in England, so it contributed to their
freedom, and this freedom on the other side extended their commerce,
whence arose the grandeur of the State. Trade raised by insensible
degrees the naval power, which gives the English a superiority over the
seas, and they now are masters of very near two hundred ships of war.
Posterity will very probably be surprised to hear that an island whose
only produce is a little lead, tin, fuller's-earth, and coarse wool,
should become so powerful by its commerce, as to be able to send, in
1723, three fleets at the same time to three different and far distanced
parts of the globe. One before Gibraltar, conquered and still possessed
by the English; a second to Portobello, to dispossess the King of Spain
of the treasures of the West Indies; and a third into the Baltic, to
prevent the Northern Powers from coming to an engagement.

At the time when Louis XIV. made all Italy tremble, and that his armies,
which had already possessed themselves of Savoy and Piedmont, were upon
the point of taking Turin; Prince Eugene was obliged to march from the
middle of Germany in order to succour Savoy. Having no money, without
which cities cannot be either taken or defended, he addressed himself to
some English merchants. These, at an hour and half's warning, lent him